When to stop writing each day

Someone in a writing group I belong to is working on a play. He’ll write one scene one day, another the next, then the two scenes don’t match. “How do you keep your writing consistent from one day to another?” he asked us.

I told him rather than try to match the style of one scene to the next, change the point where he leaves off: inside a scene rather than at the end of one.

I’ve come across the same tip from Ernest Hemingway and psychology professor Robert Boice: stop while the writing is good so you return to it with anticipation.

Will doing so make my friend’s writing more consistent? I don’t know. But it will make it easier for him to pick up where he left off.

There are mornings I sit down to my manuscript and it’s three hours before I have any focus: I’m reading the newspaper, I’m checking Facebook, I’m looking at the Twitter posts of a homoerotic illustrator.

The trick is in the stopping. At 8:30 at night when my writing is going swimmingly the last thing I want is to put it down. But like doing the dishes after I eat dinner, I’ll thank myself tomorrow.